How to Format your Data for Tableau Public

For those of you who maybe didn't work with data too much before using Tableau Public (I fall into this camp), understanding how to format data can seem daunting at first. Once you play with it a few times though, it becomes pretty easy.

We want to make that learning process even easier, so we're starting a three-part video series introducing how to format your data for the best results in Tableau Public. In general, we recommend three things when discussing formatting:

• Start your data in cell A1
• Have the first row be the column headers
• Have every subsequent row be one piece of data

This video takes a look at the first suggestion: starting your data in cell A1.

As mentioned in this video, it's important to start your data right away in cell A1, and also get rid of anything that isn't actually data. That includes titles, descriptions, group column headers and totals or other aggregations.

We'll have the next video on column headers out soon, so sit tight! We'll also be expanding our Tableau Public knowledge base and even have some practice materials on this topic.

Feel free to leave us a comment and let us know what you think, or how we can help make Tableau Public even easier to use.